Eyewitness in a Gaza hospital and defending human rights defenders

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In Inside Geneva this week we get an eyewitness account of a mission to supply Gaza’s hospitals.

Chris Black, World Health Organisation: ‘People have told me oh you must be very brave for going to Gaza. I don’t think so, I think what’s brave is the people who have been doing this work since early October, and who go back every day, to do it again and again and again.’

Aid agencies say nowhere is safe in Gaza

Chris Black, World Health Organisation: ‘A woman with her young child saying to me, are we safe here? And I wanted to say to her ‘You’re in the grounds a hospital, this is a protected space, you should be safe here’.  But I couldn’t say to her ‘you’re safe here.’’

And we hear from human rights defenders who have come to Geneva, hoping for support.

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, human rights defender, Belarus: ‘I really believe that the democratic, powerful world will its teeth and will show to dictators that they will not prevail. We are not asking you to fight instead of us, we are asking you to help us fight the dictators.’

Are democracies letting human rights defenders in autocratic states down?

Sara Abdelgalil, paediatrician and human rights defender, Sudan: ‘The disappointment of Sudanese human rights defenders and pro-democracy activists, when some of them say that it seems like democracy is not for us.’

Phil Lynch: International Service for Human Rights: ‘Without human rights defenders there are no human rights. Without human rights there is no democracy, or rule of law.’

Join host Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva. 

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